A book on heresy and late medieval literature must deal immediately with a problem – namely, that it appears counter-intuitive to claim that authors would engage in any positive fashion with a heresy that was publicly and frequently deemed to be scandalous and, eventually, punishable by death. In handling what is fundamentally an historical problem, we are required to think historically and revisit that momentous occasion, 17–21 May 1382, when the Blackfriars Council in London condemned as heretical and erroneous twenty-four distinct ideas or conclusions that were advanced by a group of scholars at Oxford University. Literary critics have viewed this event as a defining moment for late medieval writing with the understanding that the Blackfriars Council is synonymous with literary censorship. After the ruling of the Council, so the thinking commonly goes, authors policed themselves, making sure that their statements about the church, its ministers, and its sacraments, would not draw notice to themselves – lest the authorities, in wishing to silence anything short of utter orthodoxy, step in and persecute these authors as heretics.

William Langland has become the case in point. James Simpson, who has offered a compelling exploration of the intersection between ecclesiastical initiatives and late medieval writing, concludes that “royal and ecclesiastical legislation against slanderous rumour and heresy, as spoken or written, certainly did exist in the period spanning” 1378 to 1401.